For once again, buccaneer capitalism has refused to learn anything from the financial meltdown. Considering the devastation their bacchanalia has wrought (as a result of which many workers were downromneyed), you might think that, during an election season at least, Ayn-Rand/laissez-faire types would temporarily duck-and-cover, until voters are once again no longer paying attention and it’s back to buccaneering-as-usual. Yet much of the electorate, not exactly somnolent, not precisely sleep-walking, is yet still sufficiently mentally unfocussed to remain unclear about the importance of government regulation of business and finance. Capital requirements, insider trading, truth in lending, securitization -- we zone out. Teddy Roosevelt got it; today’s Republicans no longer do.

Now, the one thing that does jerk the public into some semblance of attention, is anything to do with women’s health -- women as victims -- especially when there is a kind of sex angle (in this case, boobs).

For weeks now, France has been in the throes of a

=> GIGANTIC BREAST SCANDAL <=

(Huh? says the electorate, suddenly aroused from slumber.) Namely, shoddily-made implants, filled with, I don’t know, uranium tailings or spent fuel rods or something. Oh plus they rupture. And you don't want to lean over the stove too close or they might explode. The French government (under buccaneer Sarkozy) was prodded to act as early as 2008, but only now is coming to its senses, after the defective products had spread across the English channel.

The sex stuff gets your attention, but the real takeaway is this: As the planets orbit around the sun, so do businesses orbit around profit. And one way to increase profit is to cut costs. And to take risks beyond what anyone else deems prudent. And to lie about your shenanigans, from cock-crow to when the cows are back in the barn.

Well, I’m done. Anyone who cares can easily research the matter. And while you’re at it, check out Earthquakes + Ohio + fracking.

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The first novel-length story featuring the Murphy Bros.

I Don't Do Divorce Cases

It contains stories previously published in Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock, as well as new stories never before published. Click the cover to download it to your Kindle now!

About the Author

David Justice studied French at the Sorbonne, mathematics and physics at Harvard and MIT, and math and linguistics at Berkeley.He is the author of The Semantics of Form in Arabic, in the Mirror of European Languages; and of the fictional worksI Don’t Do Divorce Cases (which includes stories originally published in Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine) and Murphy on the Mount. He taught French at Berkeley, and linguistics at the University of Alberta, then worked at Merriam-Webster as Editor of Etymology (where he edited Webster’s Book of Word Histories) and as Editor of Pronunciation.He subsequently was editor-in-chief at Franklin Electronic Publishers.He is currently employed as a language analyst, and consultant for the University of Maryland. He lives with his bride of forty years, overlooking a peaceful lake.